Ricciardo rockets to second F1 pole in Monaco

Daniel Ricciardo charged to his second pole position in Formula 1 after dominating qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix on Saturday afternoon, setting a new track record in the process for Red Bull.

On the team's 250th grand prix weekend, Ricciardo was able to continue his streak of P1s that stretched through all three practice sessions to also head the field in all three stages of qualifying, topping Q3 with a best time of 1m10.810s.

The lap saw Ricciardo take pole by two-tenths of a second ahead of Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, who bounced back from a slow first run to cut the gap at the front and leapfrog Lewis Hamilton, who was left to settle for P3 for Mercedes.

2017 Monaco pole-sitter Kimi Raikkonen struggled to match his teammate for pace, finishing fourth ahead of fellow Finn Valtteri Bottas, who took P5 in the second Mercedes, six-tenths of a second back from Ricciardo.

While Ricciardo stormed to the front of the pack, teammate Max Verstappen was left languishing at the other end of the order as he failed to take part in qualifying as a result of his crash in final practice. The extensive damage forced Red Bull to change the gearbox on Verstappen’s car, but the team could not get the RB14 repaired before the end of Q1, leaving the Dutchman at the back of the grid for tomorrow’s race.

Esteban Ocon managed to lead the midfield for Force India, finishing sixth ahead of McLaren's Fernando Alonso. Carlos Sainz Jr. took P8 for Renault ahead of Ocon's teammate, Sergio Perez, while Pierre Gasly qualified 10th after recording his second Q3 appearance of the season.

Nico Hulkenberg narrowly missed out on joining teammate Sainz in Q3, qualifying 11th after finishing less than one-tenth of a second off the pace. Stoffel Vandoorne lagged to P12 for McLaren, failing to match Alonso’s pace, while Sergey Sirotkin managed to lead Williams’ charge in 13th.

Charles Leclerc will start his first home grand prix from 14th place on the grid after battling through to Q2 for Sauber. Haas’ Romain Grosjean slipped to 15th as the team’s struggles in Monaco continued, with a three-place grid penalty carried over from Spain only adding insult to injury.

Despite showing an impressive pace through practice, Brendon Hartley was resigned to another Q1 knockout after failing to get in a clean lap late on, hindered by a slow-going Force India and yellow flags in the closing stages of the session. The issues left Hartley down in P16, one-tenth of a second off a place in the next session.

Marcus Ericsson took 17th for Sauber ahead of Williams’ Lance Stroll and Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, with the trio failing to match their respective teammates for pace. Verstappen propped up the timesheets in P20 after failing to get out on-track at all in Q1 due to the crash damage from FP3.